What Does International Travel Cost? Spending per Trip, per Night and per Year from UN Tourism, NTTO, BEA, BLS and Eurostat Data, 2009–2026

Travel budgets are usually quoted as a single figure, but spending on an international trip depends on how the trip is measured and on what it contains. We assemble public statistics on three populations of travellers. Dividing UN Tourism receipts by arrivals gives USD 1,228.16 of in-destination spending per international trip in 2025 (published as about USD 1,200), against USD 1,020.42 in 2019; international airfare is excluded. US residents on overseas trips spent USD 1,923 outside the United States over 15.32 nights in 2025 (USD 125.52 a night) and a further USD 1,300 on airfare, USD 3,223 in all. EU residents spent USD 1,121.78 per personal trip abroad in 2024, transport included, of which 30.6% was transport. Using Eurostat tables converted at annual average exchange rates, we show that trip length and distance dominate the variation: spending per night fell from USD 206.45 on trips of one to three nights to USD 32.88 on trips of 92–365 nights, 6.28 times less, and a trip to Oceania cost 4.08 times a trip to another EU country. Month of departure changed spending per trip by at most 20.7%, business trips cost 1.79 times a holiday per night, and travellers aged 65 and over spent 1.49 times as much per trip as those aged 15–24. US foreign travel spending reached USD 287.3 billion in 2025, 60.1% above 2019, while its price index was almost unchanged since 2015; US airline fares were 23.4% higher in August 2026 than a year earlier. All inputs are public.